


Inheritance

by Morkhan



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Betty Cooper is Deeply Concerned, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Gen, Jughead Jones is South Side Royalty, talking about feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-16
Updated: 2017-05-16
Packaged: 2018-11-01 09:29:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10919046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morkhan/pseuds/Morkhan
Summary: A few minutes after the Serpents left, we were seated in my dad’s living room, she on the easy chair, I on the couch across from her. Between us, splayed out on the coffee table, was the jacket, with Betty staring at it like she half-expected it to come to life and eat me before her eyes.Her fears weren’t entirely unfounded. “So…” she said after a moment. “Does this mean you’re a Serpent now?”---Takes place just after the scene in 1x13. Jughead and Betty hash out some complicated feelings over The Jacket™, and Jughead comes clean about his family legacy.





	Inheritance

**Author's Note:**

> hello, my name is morkhan and bughead is my guilty pleasure het ship. please don't make me turn in my gay card, i just started using it.
> 
> also, my first person narration is awkward as HELL, so i'm using jughead as an excuse to practice. thanks jughead, you wonderful, beautiful, pretentious little goober.

A few minutes after the Serpents left, we were seated in my dad’s living room, she on the easy chair, I on the couch across from her. Between us, splayed out on the coffee table, was the jacket, with Betty staring at it like she half-expected it to come to life and eat me before her eyes.

Her fears weren’t _entirely_ unfounded. “So…” she said after a moment. “Does this mean you’re a Serpent now?”

My eyes were locked to the snake on the jacket, transfixed by its gaze. “If I want to be,” I said. “Right now, it’s just a jacket. An invitation.” One of the sleeves was dangling off the edge, brushing the floor. Without thinking, I reached down to pick it up, and the leather felt warm to the touch, almost alive. I half-expected it to shoot off sparks when I touched it.

Betty tore her eyes off the jacket and fixed them on me. “And what happens if you accept?”

Her tone broke my trance, and I finally locked eyes with her. “I don’t know. There’s an initiation, but I’m not sure what it involves—dad never told me.”

She nodded, her eyes staring into the distant, the gears in her mind turning. I smiled without even thinking about it. I loved to watch her think. Is that weird?

“Are you _going_ to accept?” she asked.

And suddenly, I was the one who needed to process. I sighed, and leaned forward, trying to collect my thoughts. The answer to that question was more complicated than she, or I, was ready to admit, but she didn’t know that yet.

My hesitation did not sit well with her. “Juggie, you can’t seriously be considering this!”

“Why not, Betty?” I asked. “Didn’t you just write an entire editorial defending the Serpents?”

“I was defending them from being unfairly targeted for crimes they didn’t commit, Jug,” she clarified. “They still commit crimes. They’re still criminals, and I’m not okay with you being a part of them!”

“So are we,” I said, leaning back.

She scrunched her face. “What?”

“We’re criminals, Betts.” I gestured to our surroundings. “How many places have we broken into over the past few weeks? Just because we treat locked doors and Keep Out signs as _suggestions_ rather than rules doesn’t mean that’s what they are,” I said, wagging a scolding finger. “Trespassing is illegal, Betty. Illegal!”

She was actually speechless for a second. “That’s… different! That was for—”

“For a good cause?” I asked. “Do you not think that’s what Serpents tell themselves when they’re hawking bags of weed on street corners?”

At this point, Betty seemed to realize she was getting flustered. She paused, took a deep breath, and the next time she spoke, her voice was even and clear. “We committed those crimes to expose a larger crime. The Serpents conspired to _hide_ that crime, Jughead. Your dad called Joaquin, a kid _our age_ , to help him clean up a dead body. What happens when they call on you? What are they going to ask you to do for them?”

And there it was. The question I didn’t have an answer for. I sighed, and leaned forward, my eyes returning to the jacket. “I don’t know.”

“Then why are you even considering this?” she asked. She wasn’t angry. She was genuinely confused.

“It’s… complicated, Betty,” I said. “There’s… there’s some things I haven’t told you.”

I didn’t realize how that sounded until after I said it. One look at her shocked, hurt eyes, and I was backtracking as fast as my tongue would carry me.

“That’s not to say I lied to you!” I said. “I just… I haven’t told you everything.”

That wasn’t much better. “Jughead! I told you, I want to know—”

“I know, I know,” I said, trying to sound calming. “But this… I didn’t think it was important. There are parts of me, of my history, that I’ve been running from. That I don’t like to admit to myself, let alone to anyone else. But now, with me back in the South Side, and with the Serpents and everything… well, you said it yourself tonight at the Jubilee. It’s time for all of us to face who and what we are.”

Her eyes were so soft when she looked at me that I nearly broke. It’s funny, when you think about it. I could withstand all the slings and arrows and fists that Riverdale could throw at me without cracking, but the second Betty Cooper handled me like I was something precious and gentle, I threatened to break. “I’m listening,” she said.

I took a deep breath. “So… first plot twist; my name’s not Jughead.”

“Huh. I never would’ve guessed,” she said with a grin.

I couldn’t help but grin back. “Do you know what it is?”

“FP?” she said. “Like your dad.”

“Forsythe Pendleton Jones,” I corrected. “The Third,” I added, adopting an aristocratic air.

“The Third, huh?” she said with a smile. “Prestigious.”

“More than you might think,” was my reply. “My dad, FP Jones the Second, was the leader of the South Side Serpents for several years.”

Betty nodded. She knew that much.

I took a deep breath. “And my grandfather, Forsythe the First… was their founder.”

It took a second to hit her, but when it did, she sat up just a tiny bit straighter, the smallest of gasps escaping from her lips. “So… you’re…?”

“The Third of my name,” I said. “That’s part of the reason I started going by Jughead. Forsythe, FP… those names carry a lot of weight around here. Tell everyone your name is ‘Jughead’ on the other hand, and they’re a little more likely to treat you like a normal human person.” I let out a little laugh. “At least, at first. By now, everyone here knows who I really am. Do you really think I made all those friends my first day at South Side High because of my wit and roguish charm?”

Betty’s “ _Well_ …” was positively diplomatic.

I snorted. “I mean, of course that was _part_ of it,” I said. “But it wasn’t the whole thing. They already knew me, Betty. They know exactly who I am.”

“So what?” Betty said, defiant. “You’re a local celebrity. Big deal. That doesn’t mean you have to join a gang.”

I picked up the jacket. “Are you sure?” I asked, tossing it to her. “Here. Put it on.”

Wonderful person that she is, she tried very hard not to look disgusted. “No,” she said flatly, which, fair enough.

I grinned. “Okay, then, just… hold it up. Like you were _thinking_ about trying it on. How do you think it would fit?”

With only the slightest hesitation, she unfolded the jacket and held it against her, and was not shocked when it practically engulfed her. “It’s a little big.”

When I held out my hand, she tossed it back to me, and I stood up and donned it in a single motion, trying as hard as I could to control the rush of emotions it brought. _This isn’t a commitment,_ I told myself. _It’s just a demonstration_. I was trying to show her something.

When she saw what I wanted her to see, she looked… sad. Scared. Maybe even a little resigned. “It fits perfectly,” she said quietly.

“Because it was made for me, Betty,” I said, matching her lowered volume.  “ _Just_ for me, and pretty recently at that. If I had to guess, I’d say it was made for my sixteenth birthday, and my dad only held off on giving it to me because he knew I wouldn’t have wanted it then.”

Betty was quiet, and I _hated_ the way she was looking at me, as if the jacket was already consuming me. So I took it off, placed it back on the table between us, and sat back down.

“This isn’t just a jacket, Betty,” I said to the floor, before gathering enough courage to meet her eyes again. “It’s my inheritance. It’s what I’ve spent my whole life running from, telling myself that I wasn’t, while knowing, deep down, that I was. I _am_. **This** is who and what I am, Betty. I can’t run from it anymore.”

At that, Betty clenched her jaw and stood up. “No. No! I refuse to accept that.” She didn’t even bother to go around the table—instead, she stepped _over_ the jacket and sat on the couch beside me, putting a soft hand on my face and turning me towards her. “Jughead, just before our first kiss, you looked me right in the eyes and said ‘ _We aren’t our parents. We aren’t our families._ ’ I needed to hear it then, and _you_ need to hear it now; you are not your father, Jughead! You are not an FP, or a Forsythe! You don’t have to be what they were.”

“No, Betts, you’ve got it all wrong,” I said, putting my hand over hers, smiling.  “I know I’m not my dad. I don’t _want_ to be. I’ve been thinking lately… maybe I can be _better_. Maybe I can make the Serpents better. They aren’t bad people, Betty; you’ve seen yourself how Riverdale vilifies and looks down on anyone from the South Side, but they aren’t any different from the North Siders. They— _we_ are just trying to get by, just like everybody else. And I see that now! My whole life, Riverdale has tried to make me ashamed of who I am, and where I came from. But there’s nothing to be ashamed of!”

Her eyes were confused, but cautiously optimistic. “So… what, you’re going to be the new King Cobra?”

“Mmmmm… not right away. I’ll have to settle for ‘Prince,’ for a little while,” I replied.

She smiled. “The Prince that was Promised, come to save us all…”

I laughed. “Well, gee, when you put it like that, it sounds kind of arrogant.”

A perfectly arched eyebrow was all she needed to tell me her thoughts on that.

“I know, I know,” I said, taking my excitement down a few notches. “I’m not going to be able to fix everything. I might not be able to fix _anything_. I mean, who knows if the Serpents are even going to _like_ me, let alone listen to me. I know It isn’t perfect. The Serpents, the South Side, none of it. But this is the first time in my life that I’ve ever felt like I could embrace the people and the place that I came from. Embrace _myself_. Betty…” I said, taking her other hand and bringing them together so I could hold them both at once. “I don’t have to run anymore.”

She stared at our joined hands with a soft smile, and sighed, scooting towards me and turning so she was leaning against my chest. “I want to be happy for you, Juggie, I do, I’m just… I don’t want to lose you.”

I wrapped her in my arms as best I could. “You won’t,” I said, with a stupid grin, and a hubris that could only belong to the young. “I promise.” I sealed it with a kiss to her temple. And that is how we stayed for the rest of the night, laid out on my dad’s couch, nestled in each other’s arms, blissfully unaware of the darkness that would greet us in the morning.

She fell asleep first, her face tucked into my chest.

I fell asleep second, staring at the jacket on the table, and wondering… what does it feel like to lose yourself? Does it hurt? Is it something you can feel at all?

If it happens to me… will I even know?


End file.
